The Ballad of Pypies P
Seated on the stoep at “1984” (now “Ouma Annna”) in Colesberg, Maeder Osler and Jasper Cook bask in the winter sun. Coffee and biscuits arrive. Maeder, looking toward Toverberg, hands outstretched, and with a little Bollywood bobbing head, intones:
Orpheus with his lute made trees,
And the mountain tops that freeze,
Bow themselves when he did sing:
JC: Willie Wikkelspies. Henry VIII.
MO: Correct. Have you ever seen a lute?
JC: No, only a luta continua. Lute, flute. Seen one, seen ’em all.
The Brakkol AI
MO: Molweni, Jasper. Old EF’s outfit sent me an email. Quite fascinating. All about … what? Food as a weapon. Well, it’s about exploitation, versus nurture.
JC: Ahem. I am now officially at sea, a strange feeling to have on a stoep in the Karoo, false or not. You surely mean the EFF, right? Who else? And how can you forget that extra “F”? I mean, who forgets an F? Especially when it comes to the reds? And with them, weapon is right, boet.
Notes From a Clear Stream
MO: Hi Jasper, here is our winter slow platteland outreach (WSPO) proposed initiative, launched in trying times of local floodings all over the show. This time, from the village Klaarstroom, where I have delightful log-standing friends, Jeremy and Sharon Wits Hewinson, from the Klaarstroom Guest House (www.klaarstroom.co.za).
JC: Ja. Nee [nods]
MO: Over. Thanks, and Out; for the moment; now to you folk Jeremy and Sharon. What a journey it is in these times of inland and coastal floodings, inaugurating our winters, exposing our infrastructures, testing our networks. Please let us know. When suits. how you now might be further seeing the future transport routes in and out of Klaarstroom??!!.
The People's Bus
Maeder Osler writes:
I am talking from Somerset West, which also happens to be the place of the last days of both my mother and my father. Thus, in a spirit of shared praise songs, and names, it is good to feature (in this stoeptalk section of opengates) a sample of the poetry of the Somerset West linguist, Vernon February:
The People’s Bus
Nobody who is an expert
Has ever taken a ride
On a people’s bus
Lines 2 ,7 or 9.
Nobody who is an expert
Of the third world
Has ever had to arch his back
And find his way to half a seat
Nobody who is an expert
Has ever had his ears pierced
By the loud and soulful blare
Of the latest hit.
Nobody who comes with plans
In a briefcase for a better world
From his safe and opulent confines
Of his materialistic world
Has ever seen the dark and muted faces
Of the Creole and the Hindu in a bus.
Lord! Let them take a ride one day!
Nobody who comes in a plane with a briefcase
full of plans for a better world
has ever seen the peoples’ world,
from their air-conditioned rooms
over-looking palm-fronded swimming pools.
Nobody who is an expert on the poor
Has ever seen…
WOETUS
MO: Molo Jasper. How is it going now that autumn is a creeping in, and loud sing those Sedgefield water birds? Can this be said to be an age of reading for meaning? In truth a book costs almost as much as a single zol or a dram of deep south, these days, I am told. In an age which measures coffees in MacDonald or KFC cups or at one of those entrepreneurial coffee kiosks all over, coffee for sure is a luxury and so is a book, but hey the price is not too different, and one is for ever? Successive coffees very soon add up to a single book – and that is an investment surely, more lasting than the coffee spills on my T-shirt? Nothing sounds so bland as coffee for meaning, to my ears. And yours?
Books or e-Reading
The great page-turner debate
There was a sadness in the air when a book club member announced she was leaving us. Her reason being that she no longer buys books because she prefers e-reading. The rest of us rolled our eyes with the same thought in mind – there’s nothing quite like the smell of a good book. I guess that is, unless you’re a Kindle user, in which case, you probably prefer the smell of convenience. In the two-decade-old debate between books and e-readers, each side comes armed with strong opinions - dog-eared preferences, and the occasional smug grin.
Ruggered History
In a social media sign of these times a lively new WhatsApp group has been created, from round Colesberg, centred on the local links in the Boer War between South African, Australian, and New Zealander mounted soldiers. Maeder Osler takes an initial look at this new excitement in town, from a waenhuis in the district.
An encouraging aspect in the extensive WhatsApps messages on this latest initiative around wider local to global history, is the credence given to the earlier youthful Colesberg history initiative regularly reported on by toverview, and in following the efforts spearheaded by Jefferey Rademeyer and other younger enthusiasts also to explore, find out, and position the historic roles of ALL in the area.
Distinguished Visitors
All sorts of information at many times comes floating into, or is thrown back into, the Playpen, where Maeder Osler is re-learning the basics on communications in a digital age. The latest example is of a handwritten cursive 7 lines headed VISITORS penned by Morton W Barnes- Webb, the farm manager for a triumverate of rand lords . They were messrs Rhodes, Beit, Bailley (RBB), a syndicate which purchased some 45 farms in the nuwe Hantam grassy karoo area of Colesberg district, in the very early 1900’s. That was after their massive and risky investments in diamond and then gold minings, before the ending of the Anglo-Boer war, and before the 1910 colonial unification of (white) South Africa.
Klaarstroom
M: Hello down there Jasper, how are things around Sedgefield, around your stoep, in these times of digital media ?
J: Well, OK, for the moment as far as the water story goes. As far as digital media goes, we are one of the few places to have an independent media presence, The Edge, lively especially when our water and power cuts are informatively understandable.
M: Yes, I recall enjoying a copy of The Edge, when I visit your neck of the woods, near the old Choo Tjoe railway line, and its station restaurant. Today I am again wondering, this time in my opengates.africa playpen, about the ongoing role of ‘media’.
POEM: School
THE SCHOOL WAY GOES …
En route to the beach
I stop outside the school gates –
Stand still. Watch.
From around a corner
appears a line of 12 small children
all uniformed in navy shirt, white shoes.
Class Teacher leads her schoolgoers’ small phalanx,
there is no harsh marching – simply a quiet companionable one-behind-another
along the outskirts of a building
towards a classroom.
Not silence, but the odd quiet word – occasionally a skip and a jump
Not fast or slow, just the natural child’s pace.